Costa Rica Trip 2017 Trinity and Lexington Catholic

Yesterday, we had to leave Finca La Anita. It was a sad time with heart-filled goodbyes. We made the long trek to the dry forest and the beach. On the way we stopped in town and bought food at a supermarket. We also made a pitstop while Eddie voted. It was very fun with many locals having fun during the voting. Then we got to the rooms later. We were told to check our mattresses and pillows for scorpions which was quite frightening. We played soccer with the locals which was my favorit part of the whole trip! Then we ate and after, we went to the beach. It was dark and every few hours we had to get up and patrol the beach to try and find turtles and nests. It was very tiring, sandy, wet, and hard but we made it out alive. We left the beach at around 1:15 am. We got back to the rooms and had a nice sleep. It didn't last very long though because we went on a morning hike today at 6:00 am. We at breakfast at the water we hiked to. Now we are about to go to the beach after lunch to rel...

Los Tigres Nobles' presentation Mac and Lauren explaining what happened to the Gmelina leave. K-JAB's presentation Karina, Alexander, and Brendan sharing their statistical analysis. Team Indeciso's presentation Audrey and John explaining their experiment. A small waterfall in Sensoria Look at that blue water in Sensoria! Having some fun swimming in some cold water. Some pics of relaxing in the hot pools from the geothermal activity of the volcanoes around Sensoria. A cacao plant with a fruit The dry roaster for the cacao  The fermentation and drying of the cacao occurs here. Pablo making us some delicious hot chocolate from the cacao on the farm. It is a single origin chocolate because the entire process occurs at Finca La Anita as seen in the above pictures.

Today we started our day by waking up bright and early. At breakfast we were served Costa Rican coffee with local eggs and a delicious plate of rice and pinto beans. As usual we were also provided a freshly squeezed juice made from an exotic Costa Rican fruit. After breakfast we all hopped in the trucks and drove less than an hour to hike and swim in cold and hot springs. Although the hikes were difficult, the view in the cloud forest along with the greetings from many new insects and animals made the trip very worth it. We did not know what to expect but everyone was very eager to try something new. So, we hopped in the cold spring and the hot springs then had a packed lunch of juice, chips, cookies, and a warm ham and cheese sandwich. After we ate lunch we ventured back home to take part in a cacao tour led by Pablo, the owner of the farm we are staying on. He taught us all about the three main cacao beans and their differences, the history of chocolate and cacao plants, and even let...

This is the blog for today! It was a hard day today because we needed to concentrate on finishing our projects by lunch time. After lunch we presented our projects to our peers and a few of the locals working on the farm. We all had interesting projects and results and we hope to share them to you all when we come back to Kentucky! It was definitely the most stressful day yet but I am so proud of all of my friends and the research that they have accomplished in the field. We had to say good bye to our lab advisers today, Pinto and Ibrihim, but we all loved them and they will be greatly missed. It was a tiring day and I now know why some adults drink that much coffee (I had two cups to get through the day!) We will be leaving the farm tomorrow and I am excited to see what is in store for us!

K-JAB collecting data on their chemical deterrants (pepper spray above and citronella below). Los Tigres Nobles collecting data on whether Laurel leaves deter the cutting of Gmelina leaves.  Carrying cement blocks for our community service. The blocks are going to be used to build a fence around the local escuela. We had a cooking lesson with Aracelly.  Karina making tortillas. A little fun after the group made a delicious dinner of salad, tortillas and queso, and caribbean chicken.

Today started early for me. I have to get up earlier than my cabin mates for my experiment. I took a cold shower, because we currently have no hot water. It was OK though, because that finished off our lab experiments. After that I waited until breakfast where we had pancakes,eggs, and sausage. I stayed back for a bit because five people thought it would be a good idea to me all their extra sausage. It was delicious and i do not regret these decisions. We then decided to all lounge on the porch and talk until we needed to go inside for science. During this time we saw a bullet ant on the porch. After this we got started doing SCIENCE. My team Los Tigres Nobles had decided to do field experiments, this was a terrible idea. The southern sun beat down harshly as the cruel skies alternated between rain and unrelenting sun. It was hot . Mac got stung/bit by some thing while he was out in the field. My team though was not the worst off, we managed to get done rather quickly. K-Jab was out un...

Our home for the week - Finca La Anita                                                     A trail of leaf cutter ants Mrs. Smith zip lining Planning our experiments with our groups Taking fungal samples trying to find Escopvosis K-JAB making their pepper spray for the ant trail Lauren. Audrey, John Michael, Will, and Brendan riding horses Our reward for the ride - the beautiful view  View of the volcanoes and valley below Team Indeciso separating the queen from the colony for their experiment  Ants trying to reach their queen (Team Indeciso)  K-JAB making their barrier for their positive control  Los Tigres Nobles seeing if the ants are eating the Gmelina leaf for their trials Ants cutting Gmelina leaf (Los Tigres Nobles)

Full day #4: Today was a great day. We started early at 6:20 to record data for our project, and that went pretty well. We ate a nice big Costa Rican style breakfast consisting of Eggs, Pinto beans, and rice... for the third day in a row:) I’m not complaining tho bc it was pretty dang good. At 8:30 we were on our way to horseback riding station. Eddie, our tour bus driver, drove us and the ride was really fun, Eddy’s a g so that was pretty nifty @JonMichael. I had the best horse, bc I was the best ridder, and I spoke in Spanish with the man who lead the rides. I was the best, so it was pretty fun. We all named our horses, Jon Hughes’s was Reginold and it kept farting on everyone, Will Mullin’s was Ferrari, Mine was simply Stud, Lauren’s was named Dapper and was the best and most amazing grey horse(she TOTALLY didn’t insert this when Mac wasn’t looking) and I kinda forgot the rest. Jon Michael named his ¾ and Sam named his Mystery from Spongebob. We went riding for about an hour and a...

        Today I entered the rainforest and went zip-lining. It was really cool in the rainforest, and was a long hike to the zip lines. we came back to the work area and started our science projects after lunch. My group couldn't technically start our science project due to the rain so we started making the hot pepper spray and the citronella spray. For the pepper spray we  used 200ml of water, 46.3 grams of hot Costa Rica peppers, and 1 gram of cayenne peppers  and blended it all together in a blender. For the citronella spray we used 12 grams of the plants leafs and 200ml of water to make the spray. Lastly we poured all of this in a spray bottle and then put it in the refrigerator to keep it all fresh. Tomorrow we will start our experiment and spray the trails down and see how the ants will react. Hopefully it doesn't rain tomorrow lol... stay tuned in for my blog tomorrow to see how our first trails go, for o...

This video shows the extraction of a fungus garden. Day 3: The photos below are from our research presentations.

- Alexander Noal

DAY 1: Once we arrived in Costa Rica we took a van to a restaurant where the students ate fish, chicken, or beef as the main course and as sides there was salad, rice, plantains, black beans, and corn tortillas. One thing that was shocking to me was the drink we were served. It resembled a root beer float but as I took a sip I tasted a familiar flavor that I commonly drink in Lexington. It was iced tea. However, it had a white frothy mixture at the top which threw us off. After we finished our meal we hopped back on the bus and drove 90 minutes on a very slim dirt road. We drove past trees and livestock through the heavy rain with a volcano on each side of us. We arrived at our cabins and were treated by many fam dogs. Next was dinner, the cooks prepared seabass, cooked carrots, broccoli, potatoes and a delicious pesto sauce. After we finished we ate an amazing dessert and discussed why leaf cutter ants are so important to society due to their ability to make antibiotics that are ...